I wanna preface this as someone who stopped for almost a year of not playing before coming back temporarily, scanning how the game worked after that break, and quitting again. So to put it simply, im not obsessively on a hype train or such an outsider who says "destiny 2 bad lol" without any prerequisite knowledge. So ill try to make this not another Michael Crichton novel of a criticism. I genuinely dont understand how people in this game can suddenly forget about how bungie has treated them and the game for years, the pricing, the sleezy content milking, the lying, and general neglect of great aspects of the game. But this doesnt surprise me with the theme of total addiction and blind faith in the fact the game is supposedly "fantastic". Here is the fact, this game almost always stops being fun after you've done the campaigns and all the story bits, done a little pvp, gambit, and strikes and that is it. Otherwise this game functions as a glorified slog of a job as a beta tester for a game in alpha that only has the rewards not the refined grinding system. Literally all it boils down to is few builds that became even more narrow with the addition of subclass 3.0 and its loss of identity for all classes, this and the fact it just empowered other builds to stupid levels while leaving others in the dust completely. This and the fact even if you have a different build its pretty much just going to be a worse version of the same build that may not even work if there isnt a champion mod for it this season. This isnt even accounting for the fact a good chunk of activities in raids are designed specifically from the viewpoint of Well of Radiance, and now that it is gutted from what i hear, what do you think happens when the thing that was mainly accounted for is gone or changed, more PROBLEMS LOL. It isnt fun playing same build spam simulator with the best weapon in the game that is so good it powercreeps a lot of future and past weapons to the point they are worthless for the amount of time to grind them and get a good perk pool/level up to craft or said good weapon gets powercreeped out of the wazoo by another weapon with even more stacked perk pool while the others have 2 columns of 8 perks with only one good combo. And it wont even matter eventually if your playing mildly hard content as it revolves around ability spam and just abusing super meta weapons with champion mods this season. This wasnt nearly as bad of a problem when 3.0 didnt exist due to high amount of build uniqueness when class identity was defined well, not blurred to the point there is only one or no gimmicks to tell classes apart. Champions, oh my god, what a terrible addition to the game to artificially inflate difficulty, its not the fact their hard its just their such a gatekeeping annoying mechanism that exists solely to limit build diversity and frustrate players who stray from the beaten path. No mod with a good chunk of your favorite weapons? too bad you get ran over by a guy who cant be staggered, a guy with a barrier who heals, or a combo of the 2 who just runs at you full speed while healing. This isnt good enemy design, this is just artificial difficulty inflation acting as a band aid fix for bigger issues and laziness. Weapons and grinding, my god what another terrible system that is absolutely a time killer and even more so for a solo player (which btw is required to get the best gear in the game from lost sectors). I love grinding an activity for 3-10 hours at a time or total just to get a mid weapon, no good versions of the weapon, or none of it at all, just a terrible version of a weapon that has such a terrible perk pool that is composed of the worst useless perks in the game. Yes you can get that one pair of perks that is just right for on build, but those arent for every gun, not to mention some guns are just better stat versions and elements of said gun with even more perks in the list to use if craftable. I love look of said guns but what is the point of wasting my time and boring myself to death in the same mission or raid either struggling or rampaging through with a braindead build for a weapon that isnt worth or is going to be worth before another fomo weapon releases in like 3 months or something to repeat the process (which sometimes has to happen due to stupid nerfs). The TERRIBLE story implementation, literally the worst ive seen ever, terrible context except for one cinematic or using youtube to explain previous lore to then going to a mission to hear the same sunday school dialogue over and over while grinding it for one out of the 4-7 weapons for a roll that is composed of 2 out of the 70 plus perk pool combos of mostly garbage. Gunplay is good but that only goes so far when everything pedaled out in the last years is 90% recycled and resold content masked behind a new coat of paint sold for 15 dollars or 80 dollars. Like I love going through the same place again and again, or repeating said boring activity with little to no replay ability besides gunplay just to complete a quest with little to no engagement of story or lore besides a short line of text that is composed of the most boring dialogue ever. Then there is pvp, GOOD MOTHER OF GOD, this is a war crime to the definition of pvp in so many ways, terrible balancing, awful connection, half of the maps are awful, terrible comp mode (trials included). Like it is spend hours to make a mildly good build that synchronizes perfectly only to slightly boost your favorite weapon past mid to good just so it can compete in a situational event against something like NTTE, Duality, or good god cloudstrike. It is play meta or play the worst pvp experience ever, this isnt even mentioning the egregious state of snipers and such making trials a cesspit to play if no ability spam is present to ruin it. Exotics that are good for pvp are few and far between unless you are hunter, like the balancing for the best ones is atrocious, its an MMO shooter yes but god that doesnt excuse such game breakingly busted exotics in pvp. It all comes down to who cheeses harder completely, not skill just really cheesy strats fueled by juiced stats and ability spam, it is so bad. That brings me to the second to last point (that i can think of) the egregiously bad fomo and job feel you get from playing this game, "I got no good loot, i really want this piece of gear, maybe on more match to get it," hours later and still nothing remotely good after getting 10 weapons all are garbage by a longshot, this is a lucky estimate if the game even drops you that many at a time in a LOOTER SHOOTER. It isnt even fun to grind for those just a chore that brings you closer to burn out each time, for a weapon that you may never get due to terrible rng numbers, time gating, or just the ability to not have the time or friends due to bad LFG to even do said activities for a weapon, wasting even more time on an activity you have lost interest in and are only playing for the weapon. Even if you play for fun what is there to have fun with when the price is over 90 dollars for expansions that is just recycled content with Sunday school dialogue, mid drops, and almost no good story context due to most of it being behind long paragraphs of text in a lore book (it is no joke to say the lore people have had the best destiny experience over the entire franchise). Like what do you genuinely play after the campaign that is fun after the honeymoon phase that isnt just mindless grinding or meaningless slog you have done before, gambit? pvp? or the old pve strike experience filled with stupid difficulty boosts that arent challenging fun but just annoying obstacles to get past (unless you use a braindead busted build that plays the game for you until you get bored). And finally, wow, bungie is surely a company, ill say it, activision wasnt ever the main problem, it was bungie all along and always will be id guess. Lies and broken promises are stacked on their record. Dont stop criticism with the "go play another game if you arent having fun" argument or the "you sound burnt out" heard this over the years about valid criticism, stop coping and see what is right in front of you, the dumpster fire that is this game past the honeymoon phase. If you keep driving away the people who fully criticize the game, it will only stagnate the game more by enforcing an echo chamber (which is why we even got to this point in the first place). P.S.: im not even going to get into how bad the new light experience is 💀